#monster prom oz phobias

[astral-riddles]

EVERYONE STOP ON WHAT YOU ARE DOING & LOOK!!!!

NEW OFFICIAL OZ PICTURE!!!!!

[fishy-moirails]

My only Pocky day art is me wondering how would a mouthless character play the Pocky game XD

[kiruamon]

Phobia lover

Oz's phobias deserve some love too. Damien doesn't mind giving them some.;)

[frogprincessmack]

Fun Fact for Monster Prom fans!

All four members of Player Character can play guitar!!

Brian plays it in the STAMINA ending of Roadtrip. Amira does too but I got a different screenshot for her.

Oz and Amira play it in the original polaroid showing off Player Character. Oz also plays it in one of the animations for Monster Camp with his little phobias.

And Vicky plays it at the Picnic Spot! Unless I am mistaken and that is a ukulele. Eh, doesn't matter much, she's the lead vocalist.

[orbmanson7]

ohhh, bro, so the new dlc dropped where you can pick up Amira and Oz as hitchhikers (and also turn on self-love mode but i'll try that later)

and being able to talk to them and get more information about the player characters is so refreshing and cool!! (and it's great buildup for the next game being the reverse monster prom, too)

this little convo you can have with Oz (if you choose to talk about "his phobias") presented such an interesting concept about the phobias possibly being a literal coping mechanism, and i just really love that idea. it can also explain why they sometimes seem to act on their own (in a way) whenever you see the little guys, which is a very cool concept that they've already put into play in past games and added in this game (play with Oz as a hitchhiker and wait for the random car stops to see what i mean)

also they're actually terrifying, but still cute, so it's fine :)

[autisticsupervillain]

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Stats Equalized!

The show that equalizes speed, strength, and durability to see who would win in a battle of pure versatility and skill.

This Month's Fighters...

Oz vs MSPA Reader!

Rules:

The Reader from Pesterquest is used.

The Reader hasn't yet absorbed the Green Sun and the Transcendence Path is ignored.

Scenario:

Oz and MSPA Reader are both competing for the title of Most Eligible Monster Fucker. When the votes run dead even, management decides the only way to settle this is via gladiatorial death match.

Analysis: Oz

Ask yourself this: what does the ultimate embodiment of fear look like? What nightmarish, unholy abomination coukd inspire the phobias of all mankind?

Stop thinking, because you're wrong. Fear looks like a shy, awkward high schooler who is desperate for a date to prom.

Well, okay, high schooler is being generous. In the Monster Realm, everyone who goes to High School is 21 at the youngest and today's combatant is actually older than time itself. Meet Oz, the inky-dark embodiment of fear himself. His primary concerns in life are, as you might expect, passing his classes and getting laid, as is the same with everyone at Spooky High. How Oz ended up in this situation is actually rather ambiguous. It's implied that their origin story might be similar to Zoe's, that being that they were an eldritch abomination created by The Nothing meant to destroy all life who eventually saw the beauty of life and choose to live as a regular person, but the details are currently unclear and this is only our closest guess.

What is clear, however, is that Oz's otherworldly power hasn't diminished any, despite their more mundane occupation and goals. They still posses an extraordinary wealth of abilites worthy of a timeless god. Firstly, Oz is remarkably difficult to put down. Not only have they been unaffected by damage done to their soul, but they can regenerate from fatal injuries as well. They can regrow severed limbs, regenerate vital organs, and even revive from being completely ripped to shreds, provided that someone stitches them back together.

What's more, they're remarkably durable to match. His stomach can contain the Totem of Z'gord, which is powerful enough to cause earthquakes all across the school, he can trade punches with Damien, who survived punching the sun, and was completely unaffected by the game itself crashing, able to act to reverse the problem even as reality comes crashing down around his ears abd his friends and narrator are corrupted beyond the ability to even move.

See, Oz has something of a Deadpool thing going on... or maybe Gwenpool more specifically. He is, to a certain extent, aware that he's in a video game and a stort and can leverage that to his advantage on occasion. For example, he can interact with characters from seperate video games entirely (even if he can't actually see them, do to their character models not existing in his game), he can move outside the boundaries of the game map to exit reality, and even turn the game off and on again at will, reducing reality to nothing and then restoring it with a thought. This awareness does not equate to perfect immunity, however. He ultimately can never escape the game and the revelation of such gives him an existential crisis in one of the endings, though he can interact with the world outside it some degree, such as interacting with the narrator or creating a website in the real world that can interact with the audience.

Even when they aren't breaking the laws of the game over their knee, Oz still has some absurd powers in their arsenal. They are fully aware of the fact that they have plot armor, which is what gets them into their constant unlikely shenanigans in the first place. They can give this plot armor away to other people, making it so no one will pay any attention to them and they'll be ignored by any major characters as unimportant. Then, they can steal this plot armor back just as easily. He can become one with the entire universe at will, becoming everywhere at once, and can summon abstract concepts to fight on their behalf. This concepts csn be anything, from the concept of Biology to the concept of they themselves, and these concepts can destroy other abstracts, erasing the ideas they represent from existence. For example, he once summoned the concept of Biology and had it kill the concept of math, erasing math from existence and making it impossible to calculate anything. And canceling math class.

So, if Oz is this powerful, how does he struggle with anything? Well, because it's a dating sim, really. None of this really matters as far as getting a date to the Prom is concerned and all of his powers are only useful if they help with the current social situation. Why did he become one with the universe? To get inside a really high monsyer truck, of course. Why did he destroy the concept of math? To get out of math class. Hell, the school has a backup generator to restore the concept of math if it's destroyed, so no one really cares long term. Why did he hone his mind to make it immune to horrors that otherwise drive men mad? To go on a date with Zoe inside a realm that does exactly that, naturally. Does it matter that's he's unaffected by demons altering the fabric of reality? If that means they can join his rave then sure!

What matters is his social stats. Luckily, Oz has plenty of those two. He can start a rave of over 200 people in seconds, trick two angels into thinking he's God with his ventriloquism act, and become chairman of an international corporation in a single day. And if their stats aren't high enough for some reason, they can just rip them out of you, either by eating your organs, mocking you until your social skills become his, or just by enhancing his own character traits with magic spells.

There's also their outright weaknesses. First of all, Oz is willing to do almost anything to get laid or impress their friends, including basically all the bullshit mentioned above. They are a desperate people pleasure with a really bad case of both depression and social anxiety, so the opinions of others mean a lot.

Despite that, however, they are every bit the eldritch monstrosity you would expect from the embodiment of fear in raw power if not in personality.

Analysis: MSPA Reader

Sometimes, when you're reading a work of fiction, you have to ask yourself something. What does the author think the average fan of their work looks like?

Andrew Hussie seems to be under the impression that we're all nonbinary gods wjo are desperately horny for trolls. They're mostly right on that front, I'd wager.

The MSPA Reader is you. Literally. The Reader of MS Paint Adventures, the website that houses Homestuck. Or used to before the site just became Homestuck dot com. And you've been thrust completely out of your depth and thrown into the hellish world of Alternia.

Luckily, the MSPA Reader has something buried deep in their sleeves to help them survive on this hostile hell planet: a neverending thirst for friendship.

It is this and this alone that keeps them going against impossible odds. Even as they struggle to stand under the weight of countless broken bones, they will happily march through the heat of Alternia's burning sunlight, or fight against a giant killer alien bear just on the off chance that it might land them a friendship with whatever hapless alien they find next.

You'd think that such a wreckless and naive creature would get themselves killed rather quickly, but let's just say that they've got someone looking out for them. Doc Scratch, the First Guardian of Alternia, is the one who brought them to Alternia in the first place, as a part of some long term plan. Once the Reader had outlived their usefulness, Scratch locked them away in his mansion for potential later use, a choice the nigh omniscient would soon come to regret.

See, all this did was put the Reader in position to get their hands on the Treasure, a legendary weapon that removes them from the constraints of causality, fate, and even the plot itself. This means the Reader can teleport themselves to anywhen and anywhere in the multiverse at will, becoming completely exempt from the very laws of time travel and fate that govern Homestuck's reality.

Using this new power, the Reader would continue to follow their befriending instincts, trying to form attachments with all the main characters of Homestuck before their story even began. In doing so, however, they begin to do irreparable damage to the very fabric of reality, to the point where their meddling ran the risk of blinking reality, the entire multiverse, out of existence entirely.

To prevent this, the Reader decided to use the Treasure's power to absorb the Green Sun, becoming powerful enough to hold the universe together and bubble their timeline, allowing all their friendships and alterations to remain without risking reality itself. The Reader became a First Guardian, the most powerful one in Paradox Space at that.

Sometimes, all you need to do the impossible is the power of friendship.

Throwdown Mashup:

Throwdown Breakdown:

Oz far and away has more variety than his opponent does here, but this advantage is limited by his lack of proper range.

Oz's plot manipulation wouldn't effect anything, as the Reader exists outside the boundaries of the plot entirely, leaving the universe merging and the conceptual destruction as their two major win conditions. The problem is actually hitting the Reader and I don't see that happening.

The Reader can just... teleport outside of the universe and back again whenever, allowing them to move outside of Oz's range freely. As such, nothing stops them from teleporting Oz outside of the universe where he can't get back or teleporting him to the Green Sun and vaporizing him. If Oz becomes one with the universe, then the Reader can just teleport to before he did that. And while Oz's summons can kill the Reader by erasing them conceptually, Reader can just teleport to before they were summoned at all.

In other words, the Reader's one option, teleportation, is versatile enough to allow them to avoid Oz's win conditions, whilst giving them a good amount of win conditions themself.

This Month's Winner is...

MSPA Reader!

[theloremaniac]

Monster Prom Headcannon: Oz has made tiny scarves for all of his phobias for when it’s cold, He’s also done the same for Vera’s snakes.

[rjmhereunderprotest]

The Polly/Oz Shipping Post for Personal Mental Well-Being

It's been one of those past couple days, and frankly I'm in need of a break from... well a lot of thoughts. I've not been absorbing some stuff well. I'd normally slip into Gwenpool stuff, but at the moment that's kinda being a mental drain. So, I need to focus on something positive and happy and anything that makes me smile and- oh look Polly and Oz of Monster Prom!

For something that is not technically canon in any respect, because Monster Prom's canon is whatever the hell you want it to be relationship wise, Polly and Oz have always spoke to me as the S-Tier Romance of the game. Sure, many people ship Oz with Damien and Polly is... well I'm not sure who is preferred. I've noticed at least one person goes REALLY hard for Polly and Vicky. Regardless both and all Monster Prom ships, regardless of popularity are equally valid. This isn't a definitive statement about canon because right now canon isn't always the answer for me. Even though a lot of Monster Prom's promotional material likes to show Polly teasing Oz in an overtly flirty manner, that isn't a definitive statement about the creator's preferences. They've had Oz decide to date Zoe in a Monster Road Trip trailer, it means nothing. (Although Zoe is fricking awesome and is my second romance choice behind Polly) What matters most in Monster Prom, at least to me, is emotional connection and compatibility. I think it's the same for, well, frankly a lot of ships.

So this is a bit of Fandom Mentality self-care where I talk about why I've written in my mind that Polly and Oz make the most sense for romantic partners. Because I love them a lot and I find them cute and I think it just makes sense. So... let's start.

So, Oz... why do I main Oz so much is probably the real question I should be asking myself? Maybe because they fit the most with me and my high school experience. Oz is an extreme introverted, nervous social outcast. Everything about his dialogue and actions we can see him doing in the game suggests he is a mega nerd, a good student and, quite frankly, at the bottom of the Spooky High totem pole. Like I was.

I'm not a Vicky who was bold and outgoing, I'm not a Brian who was aloof and tried to coast, I'm certainly not Amira, the fiery bad girl. No, I was Oz, perpetually afraid of high school even as I took the work seriously but constantly wanted to get out of there because it was a fucking pressure cooker!

The difference between me and Oz is obvious, THEY are some kind of amorphous shadow creature who, apparently, is the embodiment of fear. He's probably older than even Liam. He's quite possibly super powerful. And his little imaginary friends who he uses to try to cope are real, they're those little phobias who pop up around him and do cute things. And yet, they choose to be THIS, they choose to be this scared high schooler who is insular, lonely looking and desperate for love/affection. At the very least he seems to WANT acceptance. Like most of the super thirsty monsters among the main characters of the game. I identified with that a lot. He doesn't want to hurt anyone, he's clearly lonely and probably not always in the best place mentally as he tries to navigate a high school that he probably doesn't need to be in. Honestly, none of the monsters need to be there though, I mean... they don't exactly LEARN anything there as far as I can tell. I'm not even sure if they have a full staff of teachers or if most of them are just jokes.

So I've always just seen Oz as my closest facsimile to my High School experience, at least in terms of how it felt, terrified of everything and wondering if I even belonged there. So while I like the other characters, Vicky and Brian especially, I always felt more connected to Oz as a result. I know this sounds like "He/They are Literally Me FR", but it's more... I just can more easily place myself into Oz's headspace and emotionally connect with him to a degree. I don't think I'd make all the choices he does, but I can certainly understand him the most out of all the characters in the cast.

When the eventual Monster Prom Reverse is released, I fully expect Oz's character will be better fleshed out. If he hasn't been already in those Monster Road Trip sequences where he can be a hitchhike passenger. This is mostly just my interpretation based on what I've seen. This is the unique thing about Monster Prom shipping when it involves anything with the MCs. A lot of it is speculation and, a little if not a lot, of self-insertion. So it's best to always keep that in mind. This is a dating sim after all, fantasy wish fulfillment is inevitable, it's something even the game criticizes about itself a lot. That a lot of this is very silly and stupid and unrealistic in terms of actually setting up a real relationship with someone, especially a romantic one. It's why it usually doesn't take itself too seriously. Which is epitomized by, who else...

Polly Geist, the ghost party girl who I'd call the face of Monster Prom if I didn't think Damian could arguably be just as much at this point, at least Tumblr wise. Polly is still super popular though and its easy to see why. She funny, fun, cool, extremely sex positive, her outlook is very progressive, lighthearted and she is herself... sexy as hell. She's just a really fun character and it's hard not to enjoy any of her scenes on their own.

Whether she's pulling pranks with Scott, (Well, mostly leading Scott into pulling pranks because the dude is too stupid and nice to know how to do them) starting food fights by flashing people, causing general mayhem in the pursuit of advancing the science of partying or scamming you into performing a nonsensical sex act, Polly is highlight of Monster Prom. Even when she's too drunk to know what's going on, or high, or drunk and high, Polly is the afterlife of the party... which goes on forever from her perspective because she's dead. And yet despite that she is the love interest in Monster Prom who loves life the most and refuses to not spend it to its fullest. You have to admire that level of extroverted joy.

But Polly is not a superficial party girl, she might be dead and therefore removed from all consequences of her lifestyle, but she isn't a shallow sex obsessed ghost. She has actual depth, probably the most out of the other main love interests, barring maybe Vera, but that's mostly because of her sisterhood with Valerie gives her some much needed motivation beyond just being an evil criminal mastermind/capitalist. (Although I imagine a few people would say there's little difference between the two professions) Polly's depth is ALL hers. Because this is the thing... Polly's Forever 22, Stupid and Partying attitude? It's a front.

Oh she doesn't actually HATE partying, sex or drugs. She loves and is ALL about that. That's as much who she is as anything, but she plays up the idea that she's an idiot... when she's far from anything. Polly is actually an accomplished MASTER Chess player, a highly advanced gaming skill level that requires a lot of forward thinking and strategizing. She really good at Chemistry, mostly because it enables to make her own drugs, but Chemistry is a highly analytical field involving math, problem solving and attention to detail. Her favorite field of study though is literature, Classic Russian Literature in the vein of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. This is reflected in one of the Pre-Game Skill Boost choices, where the FUN option (Which is Polly personified) involves making a movie that has several of the most famous Russian Novelists going off on a Hangover-style adventure.

The point is, Polly isn't an idiot. She's actually highly intelligent... so why does she act like a fool? Because... she wants to. She wants to spend her afterlife how she most desires. That doesn't preclude her other interests of course, she still loves chess, chemistry and "War & Peace", but she's capable of more than just those nerdy pursuits. She pushes herself to remain highly socially, outgoing, never allowing her love of life to dim even in death. And she just doesn't want to advertise, I think, her more intellectual pursuits. Likely because she doesn't want to appear above all of that, as better than the people she cares about, because she does care about people.

Scott is probably her best friend, as a Fellow Prank Masterz (With a Z). And Scott IS an idiot, like a complete idiot. Look up the word Himbo in the dictionary and you find his face. He might be a lovable genuinely nice werewolf jock... but he is very clearly a dumbass. But Polly will spend time with him, why? Because she's enjoys his company, she enjoys being with him and pulling pranks. She never considers being more intelligent than him as something to lord over Scott. She might easily lead him into some situations, but she never wants to make him feel inferior to her.

And that attitude extends to other people, like Kale. You might know him as the plant guy, as well as the Asexual/Aromantic character of the game. He has no interest in sex or romance... but Polly hangs out with him and smokes weed with him anyway. When your character tries to seduce Kale (albeit you do not know he is an ace at the time) Polly is irate with you for making shit weird. It's very clear Polly understands and respects personal boundaries. She'll tease people, try to make them come out of their shells, open up, live a little... but if she knows that someone is not interested she won't push things. Kale is a friend and despite being a flirty party girl, she does not do anything to jeopardize that with him.

There's a lot I could on with about Polly honestly, her friends with benefits relationship with Faith of the Coven, her sunny friendship with the cold Vera, her seemingly really good organizational skills for setting up an Orgy... but at some point I'd just be arguing that Polly is best girl and that's not why we're here. I'd just wanted to lay this all out so we better understood who Polly is.

So why with Oz? I'd be lying if there wasn't some sort of wish fulfillment element to it. Like I said, a lot of dating sims fall into this category and Monster Prom doesn't pretend its any better, it's just trying to acknowledge it and offer a different take on it. So the idea of a popular party girl falling for a neurotic nerd who's afraid of everything is no doubt appealing to me on a personal level, but I like to think there's more to it. If only so my enjoyment of this pairing isn't completely concieted sounding.

Here's the deal, Polly's obvious flirting with Oz, pushing his buttons, taking an interest in him, is clearly an effort to get him to come out of his bubble and enjoy things. To not be so scared to live life. I don't think any of it is pushy though, it's mostly knowing looks, brushing her hands along sensitive spots, she's gentle about it. She never seems to be forcibly pushing Oz to leave his safe space, but urging him to try.

The idea that Oz would be willing to try, because this crazy hot ghost girl takes an interest in him is... well frankly cute in both respects. Him because he's willing to take a risk for personal self-growth. Her because she seems to be doing this without any concept of a reward. She's not overtly trying to get in his pants and I don't think she's maliciously messing with him, playfully yes, but she clearly doesn't have sinister designs to make a fool of him. She's just decided Oz could use the chance to escape his box and she'd like to be the lockpick... and knowing her she'd probably make that into innuendo, but that's just Basic Polly at that point.

But why would Polly be interested in Oz romantically? We can already discern why Oz would be. Polly is a sexy fun party girl, she seems to take an interest in him despite having the pick of the litter. Finding out her hidden depths would like only make Oz like her more, although I suspect he'd be concerned that he thought less of her for a bit. Ultimately Polly is designed, like all the love interests, to illicit this response with ANY of the main characters you can play as. The thing that makes it different, special with Oz is that his personality as the shy nerd boy makes their match with the outgoing party girl appealing aesthetically. But why would Polly be into Oz?

Well those hidden depths I mentioned are part of it to a degree. Polly's intellectual pursuits never held her back. She probably doesn't want the same for Oz. Although I feel their more calm, collected and less extroverted nature would give Polly an anchor that she probably sometimes needs. While she is good at knowing when to stop, what her limits are and should be, let's not kid ourselves, like everyone at Spooky High, Polly has a tendency to go overboard to an extreme degree. Like, one of her endings involves the literal apocalypse so... yeah. Polly could use a tether and she probably wants that to some extent. Both for reasons I'll explain soon and reasons I've already stated. Polly likes to know when she is crossing a line because she isn't outwardly malicious, she doesn't want to hurt people in her pursuit of fun. Polly only ever gets mad if you're ruining her fun by being boring or just by being a jerk to people she thinks don't deserve it. And Oz likely knows better at times what lines she doesn't want to cross herself.

Another part of it is who Oz is himself, besides seeing some things in him that are like her, Oz doesn't come across as the kind of person who would consider Polly as just another sexy girl they can bag. Oz very clearly respects Polly, that's what a lot of the point of the events that can lead to dating of the love interests in the game are about, respect. Respect for yourself and respect for the person you want to be with, understanding who they are and appealing to those aspects, showing you're willing to meet them at their level. In my mind, if anyone would respect Polly as a person rather than just a shallow sex kitten a lot of people sometimes see her as, it would be Oz.

And this is because... well Oz himself, or themself, isn't all they appear to be. They are, after all, the embodiment of fear. As I alluded to, Oz does not seem to fit in Spooky High in any sense. He's probably more of an Eldritch than even Zoe. At least Zoe has a recognizable form as basically an adorable version of some sort of Lovecraft Mythos Tentacle Beast. Oz is some sort of shadow creature. Some people have assumed he's like Slender Man or something to that effect. An SCP that's gone rogue and decided to attend high school. He should not be intimidated by anything here. Although I imagine, if anything could make a shadowy creature that is the living concept of fear itself quake in terror, it would be high school. Oz doesn't strike me as someone who sees people as what they are on the outside. Oh imagine he would be shocked to see how different Polly is on the inside, but he's not going to let that completely deter him. If nothing else I think Oz is a very determined shadow creature. Why would he keep up this appearance of a pathetic frightened geek? Maybe because he is genuinely frightened, maybe he has other motives, maybe he's just doesn't want to be defined by what the world says he has to be. But I am certain that, at the very least, he chooses to be what he is now as much Polly chooses to be what she is now. In a strange way, they're both seemingly living an afterlife... or different life.

As a sort of aside, there is something to be said on a mythic level too of a ghost, a spirit typically meant to evoke fear in people of the inevitability and permanence of death, and a creature that is the literal personification of fear itself, falling in love. A spirit that was once mortal and a being that has just always been since time immemorial. It's kinda like something out of Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman" when you look at it in that respect. And I do like me some Sandman.

But if that's not enough to convince you of at least some substantive reason for why I like Polly and Oz together... well here we go. The one time Polly ever got serious feels most appropriate when it is connected to Oz rather than any other character, to me. Let's talk about the Locket.

The Locket is an Event Item you can unlock in Valerie's Store, like most of the added Event Items that were added in around the Holiday Season, it's meant to flesh out the love interests some. While they're not exactly lighthearted, Scott's deals with being abandoned as a pup, they're not exactly bereft of comedy either. But The Locket comes close. It starts out with the mysterious haunted inhabitant of the locket trying to share his sad story of lost love... and then Polly shows up and decides to hijack that whole plot as she do! Because she's gonna smoke it! Yeah, she's gonna literally smoke a locket and she wants you to join her. This leads to a few choices about responsible drug use, probably useful. Honestly if I ever did drugs I'd at least want to be safe about it.

However the good times of you enabling Polly's addictions is somewhat ruined by the untimely arrival of the Coven, Spooky High's pre-eminent supernatural hero squad in the vein of Charmed/Buffy, except not objectively terrible (Charmed) or written by an asshole. (Buffy) They're quick to do the usual "Just Say No" deal at Polly, wishing she wouldn't supplement her partying with constant drug use. Polly, dropping her usual fun façade, gets serious and lectures back. Insisting she is not being irresponsible... she's dead. And therefore nothing she does can hurt her and even regardless she practices safety first with her drug use. She is not any worse than someone who really enjoys a lot of chocolate and she is in control of her drug use unlike such people. "Drug Use, Not Abuse" she explains.

It almost works, the Coven actually respectfully admit that they're probably sticking their noses in a place they don't belong. Polly isn't stupid, she is responsible and more importantly she is already dead so it's not like she can really harm herself anyway. Then Polly lets it slip that the locket she's smoking contains the soul of a dead guy and they take issue with that. Smoking haunted artifacts is fine, but a clear line in their eyes is basically smoking a soul for your own benefit and possibly destroying said soul's afterlife. Polly is fed up playing nice and tells them to fuck off, because it's HER afterlife and she'll spend it how she wants. Making reference that she knows plenty about drugs because drug use was how she died. Joy, the Coven's leader, then makes a mistake. Thinking this is another bit of the ongoing gag of Polly making up how she died, she has a lot of them and this feels no different, but seemingly more insensitive by making drug abuse a joke. She tells Polly that maybe she wouldn't be so flippant about her drug use if SHE had been harmed by someone's use of drugs.

And this is when Polly loses her shit. The insensitivity of the comment sends Polly over the edge declaring the Coven, and by extension us who have mostly been silent during this whole exchange, have no idea what her life was like and what she's been through and declared that if this is how they're going to speak to her about how she lives her afterlife, fine! Fuck everyone! She's going to party... but not fun party.

Polly's in-game sprite art takes on a horrifying visage. Her eyes glow, her smile turns to a painful scowl, her rage seems to basically circle her head like something out of Poltergeist or the Exorcist. And she can only speak in all-caps rage about how she wants to keep partying forever. Her anger affects the school all around her, as the halls apparently fill with ghastly wails and flying objects. You can't even talk to her at the lunch break, she will beam Liam in the head with a chair just for "Um Actuallying" her. Liam kinda deserves it, so it's funny, but the rest of this is not.

The Coven, mostly Joy, realizing their mistake, enlist you to help them fix this. You can do this by either contacting Polly's mom or a creepy yet friendly psychic kid ala the Sixth Sense. Either way, a successful meeting ends the same way, this reaction really is related to how Polly actually died but if you want to know what happened you need to talk to Polly herself.

You find Polly huffing gas in the school basement, completely forgetting her "Drug Use, not Abuse" statement in favor of just outright indulgence. Joy and the Coven apologize best they can and say they want to understand, but Polly is indignant. Revealing that her death was caused by her father. He was the drug abuser in the family and he made life difficult for everyone. He didn't cause Polly's death deliberately, it was a car accident while he was under the influence, killing Polly, her mom, her little sister... but leaving her father alive. She had been using drugs herself at that age, but she tried to be responsible with them. Possibly as an attempt to connect to her dad, it's not outright said, but it's implied. And despite her being careful she still ended up dying anyway.

Polly at that point demands to know what crazy idiotic choice between two options are you going to pick to suddenly make all this shit better. And even the game admits that this isn't really the time to be funny and offers two options that are sincere, supportive and apologetic. If successful, it breaks through Polly's emotional episode and allows her to finally put herself at ease and come to terms with her feelings.

You might be wondering why the player has to do any of this. It wasn't YOU who stepped on Polly's incorporeal toes and shamed her. You didn't awaken any long buried trauma with insensitive speech. Well, no, but you were kinda enabling Polly's worst habits. Not the drug use, but not considering the harm she could cause to others through it, like smoking another person's soul. So, really you're sorta responsible for not checking Polly's worse tendencies, just letting her ride the haunted locket smoke train without trying to dissuade her because it's just Polly being Polly. So being honest and trying to reach her by admitting that you just want to hear her out or even just be there for her right now, no judgment or anything else, that's an important step here.

Polly of course fakes crossing over as a prank to show that she's back to her old self again and promises to be more mindful of her drug use from now on. But it's not all good. After picking Polly to go to Prom, she admits to the player that she still feels hurt and sad. That in her pursuit of living her afterlife to the fullest, she got caught up in the same mistakes her father made and she's not proud of it. Most importantly though, she admits that despite everything she doesn't hate her dad for what he did, she still loves and misses him. That a lot of her drug use was more about just trying to forget rather than confront these feelings, ignoring the pain rather than dealing with it. Being happy is great and all, but not at the expense of acknowledging when you're hurting.

In all honesty, I feel this ending works best with Oz. Because I can more readily see Oz empathizing the most with Polly in this moment. If anyone knows about hurt, it's a creature that embodies fear. And Polly has admitted to hers, feeling hurt. Oz being there for Polly, trying to show that this is okay, that being not okay is ok, makes the most sense for me. Polly doesn't want to hurt anyone because she knows what it's like to hurt the people you love. And Oz I feel knows a lot about hurt being what they are. And maybe through sharing that kind of pain, in confronting things like Polly encouraged Oz to do with his own fears, they can both be stronger people.

This isn't to say these scenes can't work with other characters, they're not built to only work with one of the MCs. But for me, a lot of Polly's stories and events, this one especially, ring the most true when it involves Oz.

I think the relationship between the two can and could be very endearing. Allowing both to actually confront their fears, center themselves and be better people in the end. Monster Prom's tagline is "Be Your Worst Self", a sort of play on words, but a lot of its romances are actually a play on that concept. The phrase is really about being true to who YOU are more than anything, that includes the worst parts of you. If Monster Prom is about anything it's about finding happiness with who you are before you can truly find happiness with another. And I feel something like PollyxOz stands the best chance of achieving that goal.

I don't want to pretend it's the only solution, of course it isn't, none of this as said before is meant to invalidate your love for Oz getting with Damian or Zoe or Miranda or Polly with Vicky or Brian or even Amira. (Although I feel like no one is beating AmiraxVera on that one) This is about what works for me and my rationalization, you are free to think differently of course. I would hope this at least better explained my preferences and perhaps even helped you a little with your own anxieties as it has mine today.

Well I suppose I should try and lead you to some more Polly/Oz content if you're interested. While I do have ideas for fanfics and there's plenty of art you can look up, I'd rather just send you over to Vanilla Chinchilla, who is probably more prolific and better artistically concerning this than I ever could be. Again, this stuff is all just me working through some junk. Plus their artwork, such as the comic panels right above this paragraph, is really cute and fun and I enjoy it a lot.

That's really all from me, if you've honestly stuck it out this long with me rambling about the romance of two monsters from a silly video game... well I applaud you I honestly don't know if this is really all that compelling. This was an exercise for my own sake, but like I said, I hope you got something out of it. At the very least, I've put something positive into this place rather than just ragging on it for crass reasons. Thank you for your time guys.

[let-me-date-them-bracket]

hi it's the "vote Dr Albert Krueger" anon and I'm BACK WITH ANOTHER LIST

Here's why you should vote Oz from Monster Prom!!!

-Literally the embodiment of fear so he can handle stuff you're afraid of for you!! but he is shy and nervous still

-Uses He/Him (preferred) and They/Them but they don't have a gender (see above for reasoning)

-Loveable dork!!!!!!!!

-also likes comics and board games

-immortal and ageless (see reason one)

-The phobias (the little black blob things on him) are edible (proven in Monster Camp) so if you want to try that then go ahead

-he worries about being cool):

-socially anxious and awkward

-HATES being mean to people

-I mean look at them. he's so huggable

if you vote Oz he'd probably be very happy!! (:!!!!

-List anon

[shenzprom]

Close buddies!

[dudeimintomonsterprom]

put my money on dork who plays dnd

[ballhall]

no refunds.

[kiruamon]

My heart burns for you

[zarekarstudio]

Drew my favourite boy, Oz <3 <3 <3 God I can’t wait until REVERSE comes out! I wanna know more about him!!

[dont-make-a-monster-prom-blog]

Hey there! Congratz on the followers, man. For the headcanons, can we have some Oz/Damien?

Oz and Damien Headcanons

-Damien and Oz regularly sit at Miranda’s table and eat their lunch with anything they can feasibly use to get food into their faces, just to convince her that it’s the latest in cutting edge elite silverware. So far the favorites include bowling balls, live weasels, the shattered fragments of Liam’s most obscure vinyl album, and a miniature spork made of pure unobtanium.

-They are the schools Trouble Couple. The ultimate partners in crime. They get away with so much shit for so long before Principal Giant Spider wises up to Oz’s big glowy-eyed innocent act.

(“Me sir? Oh gosh no, I would never fill coach’s desk drawers with flash bang grenades! That’s so awful, who would do such a thing? I hope he gets out of the psych ward soon!” *high-faves Damien behind their back*)

-Oz is the Good!partner sitting on the boyfriend couches at Sephora while Damien ransacks the Urban Decay section, a slowly accumulating mountain of boxes in their lap, patiently giving sincere opinions on eyeshadow shades and lip liner opacity.

-Sometimes when they’re in separate classes a little phobia buddy will materialize out of Damien’s shadow, climb his sleeve, give him a smooch on the cheek, and disappear again.

-Damien started picking Oz up for school in the morning when they started dating. They roll up in Nancy every morning twenty minutes late and holding needlessly fancy lattes, blaring Scandinavian grunge or Disney theme songs. Much to Liam’s chagrin, the students lower down in the pecking order somehow still think they’re cool.

-Constant PDA. Oh, you thought Scott would be a clingy boyfriend? At least he doesn’t start giggling and nose-nuzzling his SO in the middle of the classroom while a swarm of angry, on-fire ghost hornets terrorize the student body in the background. They have custom text alerts for each other. Every conversation is ended with an “I love you”. They are the highschool sweethearts you kind of hope will have a huge ugly public breakup so you can feel less bitter and jealous, and then NEVER DO. They show up to their 20 year high school reunion still holding hands.

[autisticsupervillain]

It's Fictional Throwdown Friday!

This Week's Fighters...

Oz vs Heaven Ascension DIO!

Conditions:

Speed Equalized. DIO has fully absorbed the Holy Corpse

Scenario:

Oz plans on asking Vera to the Prom. Vera agrees on the condition that Oz do her a favor. Vera got herself indebted to a mysterious cult and has no intention of actually paying them, so she enlists Oz to get her out of this debt. Oz decides to accomplish this by assassinating the cult's god, DIO.

Analysis: Oz

Ask yourself this: what does the ultimate embodiment of fear look like? What nightmarish, unholy abomination coukd inspire the phobias of all mankind?

Stop thinking, because you're wrong. Fear looks like a shy, awkward high schooler who is desperate for a date to prom.

Well, okay, high schooler is being generous. In the Monster Realm, everyone who goes to High School is 21 at the youngest and today's combatant is actually older than time itself. Meet Oz, the inky-dark embodiment of fear himself. His primary concerns in life are, as you might expect, passing his classes and getting laid, as is the same with everyone at Spooky High. How Oz ended up in this situation is actually rather ambiguous. It's implied that their origin story might be similar to Zoe's, that being that they were an eldritch abomination created by The Nothing meant to destroy all life who eventually saw the beauty of life and choose to live as a regular person, but the details are currently unclear and this is only our closest guess.

What is clear, however, is that Oz's otherworldly power hasn't diminished any, despite their more mundane occupation and goals. They still posses an extraordinary wealth of abilites worthy of a timeless god. Firstly, Oz is remarkably difficult to put down. Not only have they been unaffected by damage done to their soul, but they can regenerate from fatal injuries as well. They can regrow severed limbs, regenerate vital organs, and even revive from being completely ripped to shreds, provided that someone stitches them back together.

What's more, they're remarkably durable to match. His stomach can contain the Totem of Z'gord, which is powerful enough to cause earthquakes all across the school, he can trade punches with Damien, who survived punching the sun, and was completely unaffected by the game itself crashing, able to act to reverse the problem even as reality comes crashing down around his ears abd his friends and narrator are corrupted beyond the ability to even move.

See, Oz has something of a Deadpool thing going on... or maybe Gwenpool more specifically. He is, to a certain extent, aware that he's in a video game and a stort and can leverage that to his advantage on occasion. For example, he can interact with characters from seperate video games entirely (even if he can't actually see them, do to their character models not existing in his game), he can move outside the boundaries of the game map to exit reality, and even turn the game off and on again at will, reducing reality to nothing and then restoring it with a thought. This awareness does not equate to perfect immunity, however. He ultimately can never escape the game and the revelation of such gives him an existential crisis in one of the endings, though he can interact with the world outside it some degree, such as interacting with the narrator or creating a website in the real world that can interact with the audience.

Even when they aren't breaking the laws of the game over their knee, Oz still has some absurd powers in their arsenal. They are fully aware of the fact that they have plot armor, which is what gets them into their constant unlikely shenanigans in the first place. They can give this plot armor away to other people, making it so no one will pay any attention to them and they'll be ignored by any major characters as unimportant. Then, they can steal this plot armor back just as easily. He can become one with the entire universe at will, becoming everywhere at once, and can summon abstract concepts to fight on their behalf. This concepts csn be anything, from the concept of Biology to the concept of they themselves, and these concepts can destroy other abstracts, erasing the ideas they represent from existence. For example, he once summoned the concept of Biology and had it kill the concept of math, erasing math from existence and making it impossible to calculate anything. And canceling math class.

So, if Oz is this powerful, how does he struggle with anything? Well, because it's a dating sim, really. None of this really matters as far as getting a date to the Prom is concerned and all of his powers are only useful if they help with the current social situation. Why did he become one with the universe? To get inside a really high monsyer truck, of course. Why did he destroy the concept of math? To get out of math class. Hell, the school has a backup generator to restore the concept of math if it's destroyed, so no one really cares long term. Why did he hone his mind to make it immune to horrors that otherwise drive men mad? To go on a date with Zoe inside a realm that does exactly that, naturally. Does it matter that's he's unaffected by demons altering the fabric of reality? If that means they can join his rave then sure!

What matters is his social stats. Luckily, Oz has plenty of those two. He can start a rave of over 200 people in seconds, trick two angels into thinking he's God with his ventriloquism act, and become chairman of an international corporation in a single day. And if their stats aren't high enough for some reason, they can just rip them out of you, either by eating your organs, mocking you until your social skills become his, or just by enhancing his own character traits with magic spells.

There's also their outright weaknesses. First of all, Oz is willing to do almost anything to get laid or impress their friends, including basically all the bullshit mentioned above. They are a desperate people pleasure with a really bad case of both depression and social anxiety, so the opinions of others mean a lot.

Despite that, however, they are every bit the eldritch monstrosity you would expect from the embodiment of fear in raw power if not in personality.

Analysis: DIO

Have you ever wondered what would have happened if the bad guy won? Have you ever worried about what sort if hellish nightmare world they'd create if they ever got their way? Worry no longer, for this villain created a paradise Over Heaven.

Dio Brando, or just DIO these days. The vampiric monsterous dog Killer we all love to hate. This particular version achieved his dream of a World Over Heaven, turning his home reality into one that worshipped him. Truly, an egomaniac's idea of paradise. And, of course, it wasn't enough. When DIO learned of worlds beyond his own, he began plotting a way to conquer them all, starting with the main timeline.

Given that this is just Dio 2: Electric Boogaloo, everything within DIO's standard moveset is still here. He is still a vampire and has all those same powers with seemingly none of the weaknesses. And he still has his time stopping Stand: The World, which non-Stand users cannot see or harm. However, you may notice that The World looks a bit different then normal and that's where all of this starts to change.

The World has evolved into The World Over Heaven, becoming much stronger than it's canonical counterpart in the process. As such, DIO now has access to numerous reality breaking warping powers, many of which make his old arsenal completely superfluous. While his healing factor is still there, it hardly matters when he can just warp away any serious injuries he sustains. He can still hypnotize you with a glance or with his hair, but why would he when he can simply corrupt you into serving him, altering your morals and loyalties as he needs. Hell, while he's at it, he can give you some new perks, such as bestowing his own ability to travel across time and the multiverse to his new followers.

The few old abilities that are still useful have likely been enhanced to an even greater degree, such as his time stop, whereas whole new abilities have been added to the fray to make DIO even deadlier. The main of which, from which all of his other powers stem, is his Reality Overwrite ability. This power allows his stand to Overwrite the reality of anything it physically touches with its hands, allowing it to instigate all sorts of effects. For example, it can nullify the powers of other Stands, wipe people from existence, and devour the souls of targets to boost its own power.

In a sense, The World Over Heaven is the polar opposite of another powerful Stand, Golden Experience Requiem. Giorno himself, GER's user, has even observed as much. GER functions by setting the actions an enemy takes against it's master to zero, making it so that any attack against it's owner never happens at all. It basically removes the cause from effect to render its enemy helpless. The World Over Heaven was still able to nullify this ability regardless, implying it might have a resistance against causality manipulation, though GER's exact limits are so vague that it's difficult to mark down exactly what this means.

DIO can even apply this effect to a cosmic scale, using it to create the Over Heaven Area, a vast cosmological body containing numerous stars, meaning its power so great it can at the very least create entire solar systems at will.

All of this is only further amplified once DIO absorbs the Holy Corpse, becoming the Son to DIO's Father and TWOH's Holy Spirit. The various remains of Jesus Christ himself, the parts of the Holy Corpse are known to great the ability to see far into the future, communicate telepathically, and resist being transmuted into mindless dinosaurs.

Furthermore, the full corpse completely upgrades DIO's Stand, allowing it to warp reality without requiring physical contact (as evidenced by him corrupting Jolyne without touching her and warping the entire universe into a massive stary sky), granting DIO perfect control over the entire world.

Or it would have, if DIO hadn't forgotten one important detail. As they say, history repeats, and DIO has once again forgotten that Star Platinum was the same kind of Stand as his own. As such, when he upgraded The World Over Heaven, Star Platinum, Jotaro Kujo's Stand, evolved to become Star Platinum Over Heaven. As such, Jotaro now had all the same powers that DIO did, allowing him and his daughter to once again kick DIO's ass and return their world to normal.

Regardless of his failure, Heaven Ascension Dio stands tall as the one version of Dio Brando to earn the title of GOD.

Throwdown Mashup:

Throwdown Breakdown:

Alright, God against God, pound for pound.

For starters, a big advantage for HA DIO is that Oz can't see Stands, allowing Over Heaven to flank and attack at leisure. While this is a pretty devastating disadvantage to be at against a JoJo's character, it is not an automatic loss. The major thing in Oz's corner is his various resistances, which would check a lot of DIO's automatic win conditions. For instance, I don't think DIO could just warp Oz out of existence, as not only has Oz been unaffected by smaller scale distortions to reality but he was unfazed by the game crashing and even getting turned on and off completely, meaning he resists Existence Erasure on a universal scale.

However, Oz's resistances are not omnipresent against all the hax DIO can throw at him. Can they resist getting corrupted and having their mind bent to his will? Yes, they've resisted both of those things before, from Zoe's mind screwing dimension and a glitch completely corrupting and crashing the entire game respectively. Can they resist getting sent back in time or having their soul destroyed? No. This means that DIO would have numerous options to win with.

Oz, on the other hand, has plenty of win conditions as well. Summoning an abstract concept to kill DIO down to the very conceptual level, for instance, is something that DIO both wouldn't expect and can't counter. He's never been shown to directly effect the very concepts that govern reality like Oz can, so saying he can Reality Overwrite it is presumptuous.

I do want to clarify that I don't see Oz turning reality off and on as a win condition due to how it works. It's either the game is on or it's not on. When it's off, Oz doesn't have a reality he can exist in or interact with and when it's turned back on DIO will be there again. At most, it'll throw DIO through a loop because he's going to remember briefly not existing and get thrown off by that. Though that might back fire because it would convince DIO to take them more seriously.

What I think ultimately makes this Oz's game is stalling tactics. Not only is stalling with superfluous bullshit something Oz tends to do anyways, but he has more options to wait DIO out until he can play that one trump card. For example, they can give DIO their own plot armor, meaning he'll see them as completely irrelevant (well, moreso than he already will) and ignore them completely, granting Oz plenty of time to come up with a plan and later steal that plot armor back. Or they could merge with the entire universe to force DIO to try and steal the soul from all of it simultaneously, which isn't something I'm convinced he can do, nor can he punt Oz to another universe or back in time while in this state because, well, they're the universe. Are these perfect counters? No. But they're more of a buffer than DIO has, which is to say, none at all.

If DIO gets his, he just has The World Over Heaven warp away any damage done, which isn't something he can do against getting killed conceptually. Oz's methods on the other hand can slow down what DIO has to offer. And sense this is DIO we're talking about, a perfect combination of overly cautious and massively egotistical that means he drags out fights a lot, Dio likely isn't going to land the strikes he needs before Oz, say, merges with everything and nullifies his win conditions or kills him conceptually.

Of course, Oz is then going to have to explain to Father Pucci why his god no longer exists and I'm not sure the ventriloquism act is gonna save them this time. But that's a matter that's outside the realms of this debate.

This Throwdown's Winner is...

Oz!!